InDia’s FastEst CaRiCatURE MaKER
At the ongoing annual trade fair at Pragati Maidan, there was quite a queue outside the Income Tax Department’s stall. Curiosity took us inside. There was a heavyweight official making the visitors’ fast caricatures with a black pen in one minute. It was fascinating to watch Sajjive Balakrishnan (54), Deputy Commissioner I-T, who came especially from Kochi for this. In 2012, his name was included in the Limca Book of Records for drawing the maximum number (651) of live full body caricatures in 12 hours in 2010. Since 2014, Balakrishnan has been coming to I-T Department’s stall to make the caricatures of over 2,500 visitors. Five feet six inches tall, Balakrishnan weighs 121.5 kg. But he sits comfortably, while making caricatures. “I am the heaviest caricature maker in India, may be also in the world,” he said, laughing. He is vice-chairman of Kerala’s Cartoonist Academy. So far, he has drawn over 1.25 lakh caricatures. Balakrishnan’s passion began when he was a Class eight student. He did a six-month-long postal training from Kerala’s famous Santhanus Chitra Vidhyalaya under noted guru Vijaya Sarathi. He pursued the art while doing BS . (Physics) at the Calicut University and twice won the “University XI” awards and actor John Abraham award for young cartoonists. He made political cartoons for many magazines and newspapers. In 1988, he joined the I-T department. His wife Lekha (47) is a well-known Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu playback singer. Their only child Siddharth (17) plays keyboard musical instruments.